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The Agricultural Transformation Agenda
When it comes to agricultural programmes, Nigeria has witnessed a few. Despite the renewed interest by different governments and also glaring fact that agriculture contributes the highest to Nigeria’s GDP, Nigeria has not been able to meet its food sufficiency from local farming. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nigeria witnessed the “Operation Feed the Nation” and “Green Revolution”.
Since the advent of fourth republic, President Jonathan has shown interest in the place of agriculture to stem youth unemployment and also cut back our import bill. This is known as the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).
A key component of the ATA is to provide 3.5 million agric jobs by 2015.
We think this is laudable but we will like Mr. President to explain how many jobs have been created? What has been the effect of the programme on cutting down food imports and how much does Nigeria earn from agricultural exports? Measuring the performance and communicating it to the public is key.
We also want to ask the President why is the budget for agriculture in 2014 less than what was stated in the Transformation Agenda Strategy Plan?
